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Modern Description: Ancient Dyme, occupied the place of modern K. Achaia. The city, which is documented in ancient litterery sources, was the largest one in western Achaia after Patra. It is probable, though unlikely, that the original name was Paleia or, according to Strabo, Stratos. Both names might have been names of hamlets, which were later united to constitute ancient Dyme.
Dyme, along with Patra, played a key role in the foundation of the 2nd Achaean League in 280 B.C. and its political status and wealth during this period, is attested by its coinage and by the imposing series of grave stelae wich hev been found in its cemeteries. The city's influential role in Hellenistic and Roman times has been pointed out by historians, such as Polybius, Liby and Plutarchus. Roman admiral Sulpicius destroyed the city in 209 B.C. and sold its population as slaves. A few years later, Philip V bought them back and returned them to the city, thus connecting Macedonian monarchy with Dyme.
In the period after 146 B.C. Dyme was the only city in the region to challenge the Roman rule. According to an inscription of the 2nd cent. B.C., found in K. Achaia, a liberal, anti-Roman movement was active in the city. Another inscription informs us that Macedonia's subconsul Q. Fabious Maximus suppressed a political and social uprise in 115/4 B.C. After this sad incident Dyme dissappears from written sources of its time. With ecomomic and demographic decline having reached disturbing proportions in the 1st cent. B.C., Pompeius, after his victorious campaign against the pirates in 67 B.C., settled a large number of the defeated pirates in Dyme, for, according to Plutarchus, the city was 'short in men' but had 'ample and good land'. Despite Pompeius' efforts, though, to distance the pirates from their old habits and femiliarize them with simple, rural life, this try did not succeed.
In 44 B.C. the depographic situatiuon was the same, so Ceasar founded a Roman colony. The city's coinage becomes active once more and inscriptions multiply. Not long afterwards, towards the end of Tiberius' reign, for reasons unknown to us, Dyme becomes part of the mighty colony of Patra
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyme
Wikidata ID: Q1231662
Trismegistos Geo: 3557
Manto: 10082237

Info: Patras University

(Monuments of Aitoloakarnania and Achaia, 2003, University of Patras)

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